Contracthireacar.com customers are reducing their reliance on diesel models faster than expected, says the leasing company.

It carried out analysis of its own risk fleet following the research published by Arval for its 2016 Corporate Vehicle Observatory Barometer, which points to a 5% overall reduction in UK fleets’ use of diesel by 2021.

Arval’s study forecasts a 12% reduction in diesel use for larger fleets and a 1% reduction for smaller fleets of 40 or fewer vehicles, the latter accounting for the majority of Contracthireacar.com’s client base.

During the period January to July 2015, diesel made up 86% of car leasing deals written by the firm, with petrol on 12.57%. Alternative vehicle fuels such as hybrid and electric accounted for 1.42% of orders.

A year on, Contracthireacar.com data covering the period January to July 2016 stands at 79.29% diesel usage, with petrol having risen to 17.61% and alternative fuels having increased to 3.10%.

Craig Davy, business development manager for Contracthireacar.com, said: “With influencing factors ranging from the Volkswagen headlines, fuel price trends, advancements in turbocharged petrol engines and the EU leave result, to new London Mayor Sadiq Khan likely to introduce a T-Charge to deter older diesels and bring forward the city’s ULEZ, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing the switch to petrol and particularly hybrids and electrics accelerate.

“ULEV and EV orders doubling is to be expected but the 5% switch back to petrol within just a year is somewhat surprising.”

Read more: Fleet News

Several nations have enacted strict fuel economy standards but, for the most part, they have not required automakers to sell electric cars.

In the U.S., only the state of California has a zero-emission vehicle mandate that puts such a requirement on carmakers.

Yet even without mandates, automakers may soon be forced to sell large numbers of electric cars just to meet fuel-economy rules.

That’s the conclusion of a study published in June by the World Energy Council (WEC), which argues that automakers will need quite a lot of electric cars indeed.

Among the major the points in the full study (pdf) is a prediction that 16 percent of cars sold in 2020 will have to be electric in order to meet emissions standards.

The study compares emissions-reductions targets for the U.S., China, and the Europe Union—the world’s three largest car markets, with anticipated fuel-economy improvements that can be achieved with internal-combustion engines alone.

By the WEC’s estimation, larger volumes of electric-car sales will be needed to plug an “EV Gap” between fuel-economy targets and the improvements that can be realistically expected from internal-combustion engines.

Read more: Green Car Reports

Having one out of every six new vehicles be of the battery-electric variety? Heck, that’s California’s Silicon Valley in a nutshell, and that’s only if you count Teslas.

But the rest of the world will have to catch up in order to meet greenhouse-gas emissions standards set by the world’s largest governments.

That’s what Green Car Reports synopsized out of a World Energy Council (WEC) study, which said 16 percent of new vehicles sold in 2020 would have to be battery-electric to comply with US, European Union, and China greenhouse-gas emissions mandates. Specifically, 10 percent of Europe’s new cars would need to be electric by the end of the decade, while 11 percent of US new vehicles would be required to be electric. As for China, a whopping 22 percent of new-vehicle sales would have to be electric in order for the country to meet progressively stricter transportation-emissions limits.

The good news is that such an increase in electric-vehicle adoption would raise global electricity demand by just a half percent. The bad news is that US, Europe, and China would all have to build additional power-generating capacity in order to meet that 16-percent figure for electric-vehicle sales. Of course, power generation often involves using resources that spew emissions, but we’d prefer not to end up in a wormhole here.

To put that percentage into context, Navigant Research last year said Americans will buy 7.4 million plug-in light-duty vehicles between 2015 and 2024, or an average of 740,000 a year. Last year, Americans bought about 17.5 million vehicles, indicating that even Navigant’s optimistic forecast would still leave the US well short of that 11 percent of new-vehicle sales even while including plug-in hybrids.

Source: AutoBlog

The DfT’s data shows a total of 57,207 electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars registered in the United Kingdom in the first quarter of 2016. That’s 0.18% of the 31.4 million total passenger cars on the road, including models which aren’t eligible for the government’s Plug-in Car Grant.

Discounting anomalies due to small volume areas, the West Midlands has the highest concentration of these vehicles, at 8,146 units or 0.27% of a total 2.98 million passenger cars in the region. Within that, 5,449 are registered in Birmingham – that’s almost one in every 100 vehicles, and only just behind the 6,094 in the London Boroughs.

At 0.92% of all passenger cars, that means Birmingham residents are four times more likely to own a ULEV than those living in Greater London (where these account for 0.23% of the total).

In England, one in every 500 registered cars (0.20%) is a now plug-in hybrid, electric or hydrogen fuel cell model, with uptake skewed towards the south of the country. The North East, North West, Yorkshire and East Midlands were all significantly below that overall average.

By region or local authority, the largest concentrations are found in the Cotswolds (2.03%), Peterborough (1.59%) and Slough (1.52%).

Uptake is slower in the other nations. Scotland has 3,041 ULEVs registered, or 0.13% of a total parc of 2.42m, with Glasgow (408 vehicles) and Edinburgh (252 vehicles) as the largest by volume. The technology is also finding a home in the Islands, with the Shetland Islands at 0.20% and the Orkneys at 0.74% – though obviously of a much smaller overall parc.

That falls to 0.13% (903 vehicles) in Northern Ireland, while in Wales, 0.09% (1,320 of 1,52m vehicles) are plug-ins, with Swansea recording the highest number of registered vehicles (171 units).

Source: EV Fleet World

Sales of electric cars continue to break records with the announcement by Go Ultra Low that more plug-in vehicles have been sold in the first half of 2016 than at any other half-way point. Electric car registrations are up almost a third compared to January – June last year at 31.8 per cent.

In 2015, it took another three months to reach this year’s 19,252 registrations, 4,640 units ahead of the same point in 2015, with that figure not reached until September last year. Also Q2 2016 is the 22nd consecutive quarterly rise for new plug-in car sales.

Records begin in 2011 when the UK Government introduced the Plug-in Car Grant (PiCG), offering electric car buyers an incentive to go green. Sales have continued to rise despite a change to the grant system that came into place in March 2016, which saw the original £5,000 subsidy for eligible vehicles – both pure electric (EV) and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) – halved for PHEVs and dropped by £500 for EVs.

The strong start to 2016 sees sales of PiCG eligible cars sit around the 70,000 mark. Transport Minister John Hayes said:

“I am delighted to see record numbers of motorists coming round to the benefits of cleaner, greener vehicles, which are also cheaper to run. The low-emission sector supports over 18,000 UK jobs and is a key pillar in our ambition for a low carbon, high tech and high skills economy.

“We want to make the UK a world leader in electric vehicle uptake and manufacture, to ensure that by 2050 every car and van on our roads is a zero emission vehicle. We are backing this with one of the most comprehensive support packages in the world, with more than £600m of government investment to help grow the UK market.”

Poppy Welch, Head of Go Ultra Low – the campaign backed by government and vehicle manufacturers to promote ultra low emission vehicles (ULEVs) – said:

“The continued growth in uptake of electric cars speaks for itself as registration records continue to be broken by motorists encouraged by the benefits electric motoring can bring.

“As awareness grows and motorists see the wide variety of vehicles already on UK roads coupled with benefits such as running costs from as little as 2p per mile, more drivers than ever are becoming motivated to go green. Since the introduction of the Plug-In Car Grant was introduced in 2011 the variety of electric models has expanded significantly, notably so in the past two years, giving motorists more choice than ever before.”

Source: Next Green Car